Justice Now!

Attorney, Howard Dean supporter, blogs about international, national, Hawaii and Maui politics. Wants to see democracy and justice restored in the United States, and our troops brought home to fight forest fires and aid tsunami victims, not kill people.

The video footage provides a first hand glimpse of what transpired in Franklin County on Election Day, only in heavily leaning Democratic precincts, including unexplained voting machine shortages, organized campaigns directing voters to the wrong polling places, malfunctioning voter tabulation equipment, election worker confusion and incompetence, and a host of other problems. However, as detailed in an official affidavit by Richard Hayes Phillips, a geomorphology Ph.D. from University of Oregon, the extent of voter disenfranchisement was systematic and widespread in African American precincts throughout the state. Dr. Phillips sworn testimony read:

"For the second Presidential election in a row African American voters have been subjugated to second class citizens through systematic efforts by Republicans to suppress, intimidate, and disenfranchise our vote," said Rev. Bill Moss, the original Plaintiff in Ohio, and founder of the Center for Freedom and Justice. "Whether its Katherine Harris or Kenneth Blackwell, the purpose is the same: do everything in their power to ensure George W. Bush becomes President. If those in power are willing and able to thwart democracy and abuse the civil rights of American voters, right in the face of the press and public, what won’t they do? I am contesting this election because tyranny, particularly in the guise of democracy, is our civic duty to fight."

By far the single most troubling demonstration of possibly widespread voter suppression -- and when I use this term, make no mistake that I mean race-based suppression -- was demonstrated visually by dKos diarist jmknapp in his diary Cuyahoga County African American voting patterns, and again emphasized earlier this week by TocqueDeville. Mapping precinct locations over a color-coded map of Cuyahoga County showing majority-black vs. majority white municipalities, we can get a good approximation of precinct densities and, roughly speaking, population densities:

That's not just a "strong correlation". That's something damn near approaching conclusive evidence that something was going on in the black precincts that wasn't going on elsewhere. In his other diaries, he demonstrates similar patterns.

I will state outright that, of all the statistical analyses that purport to "prove" something about this election, this is one of the very few that, in my own opinion, is both demonstrating something concrete and has no immediately obvious counter-explanation. It is strong circumstantial evidence of something, and that something needs to be investigated, regardless of other election efforts.

The Bottom Line

It is clear, just from the most solid tier of evidence, that there were Republican efforts to disenfranchise minority voters in specific, and Democratic-leaning voters in general. Whether it be flyers, phone calls, or the work of Sproul & Associates, this election, like many past elections, demonstrated once again that the Republican Party goes to great lengths to try and keep certain minority groups from expressing their voting rights.

The question is, of course, what to do about it. If these efforts had a common organizer, it hasn't been discovered yet; in fact, most of these minority intimidation/deception tactics have been going on a very long time, and hardly need an "organizer" at this point. If we were serious about voter suppression and intimidation efforts, however, we'd be pursuing evidence against and indictments of the people who participated in those efforts -- including some specific Republican poll "challengers" at certain precincts who took their role as "challengers" of minority voters very, very seriously.

Unbelievable Hypocrisy: Torture Means Just What Bush and Gonzales says It Means

Bush's New Attorney General:

...in July of 2002 the president's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, convened his colleagues in his cozy, wood-paneled White House office. One by one, the lawyers went over five or six pressure techniques proposed by the CIA. One such technique, a participant recalls, was "waterboarding" (making a suspect think he might drown). Another, mock burial, was nixed as too harsh. A third, the open-handed slapping of suspects, drew much discussion. The idea was "just to shock someone with the physical impact," one lawyer explained, with "little chance of bone damage or tissue damage." Gonzales and the lawyers also discussed in great detail how to legally justify such methods...

Sources close to the Senate Judiciary Committee say a chief focus of the hearings will be Gonzales's role in the so-called "torture memo," as well as his legal judgment in urging Bush to sidestep the Geneva Conventions. In a Jan. 25, 2002, memo to Bush, Gonzales said the new war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners." Some State Department lawyers charge that Gonzales misrepresented so many legal considerations and facts (including hard conclusions by State's Southeast Asia bureau about the nature of the Taliban) that one lawyer considers the memo to be "an ethical breach."

Today, on United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States reaffirms its commitment to the worldwide elimination of torture. The non-negotiable demands of human dignity must be protected without reference to race, gender, creed, or nationality. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

To help fulfill this commitment, the United States has joined 135 other nations in ratifying the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. America stands against and will not tolerate torture. We will investigate and prosecute all acts of torture and undertake to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment in all territory under our jurisdiction. American personnel are required to comply with all U.S. laws, including the United States Constitution, Federal statutes, including statutes prohibiting torture, and our treaty obligations with respect to the treatment of all detainees.

The United States also remains steadfastly committed to upholding the Geneva Conventions, which have been the bedrock of protection in armed conflict for more than 50 years. These Conventions provide important protections designed to reduce human suffering in armed conflict. We expect other nations to treat our service members and civilians in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Our Armed Forces are committed to complying with them and to holding accountable those in our military who do not...

"He described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations," the document stated. The memo also mentioned "cover-up of these abuses."

War Crimes

THANKS TO a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups, thousands of pages of government documents released this month have confirmed some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign detainees by the U.S. military and the CIA -- truths the Bush administration implacably has refused to acknowledge. Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration's whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false.

Though they represent only part of the record that lies in government files, the documents show that the abuse of prisoners was already occurring at Guantanamo in 2002 and continued in Iraq even after the outcry over the Abu Ghraib photographs. FBI agents reported in internal e-mails and memos about systematic abuses by military interrogators at the base in Cuba, including beatings, chokings, prolonged sleep deprivation and humiliations such as being wrapped in an Israeli flag. "On a couple of occasions I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water," an unidentified FBI agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004. "Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more." Two defense intelligence officials reported seeing prisoners severely beaten in Baghdad by members of a special operations unit, Task Force 6-26, in June. When they protested they were threatened and pictures they took were confiscated...

Sunday, December 12, 2004

"A second convoy from Baghdad, headed by Dr. Said Ismael Haki, the IRCS president, delivered aid to Fallujah on Nov. 26. 'There are no houses left in Fallujah, only destroyed places,' Haki said. 'I really don,t know how the people will return to the city. No one will find their homes.'

As U.S. troops in Fallujah engaged in what has been described as the most intense urban combat since Vietnam, the controlled press scrupulously avoided discussion or footage of the devastation of the rebellious Sunni city. For example, during the second week of the attack, rather than discuss the widespread devastation of Fallujah, U.S. television news programs focused largely on a brawl between basketball players and fans in Detroit.

At least 136 U.S. soldiers were killed during November in Iraq, and more than 800 were wounded, most of them in Fallujah, making it the most costly month, and operation, in terms of U.S. lives lost since the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003.

FOR WHAT CAUSE?

Michael Ware, Baghdad bureau chief for Time magazine, who has been in Fallujah during the fighting, said U.S. actions in Fallujah are 'creating the nightmare that we are seeking to prevent.

'I stood there as I saw American boys die,' Ware told Chris Matthews of MSNBC on Nov. 24, 'I mean, a man shot at close range, blown apart by a rocket-propelled grenade. He dies there in front of you, and I can,t help but think why? For what cause?"

'I see us creating the very thing that the president said we went there to prevent,' Ware said, '. . . . subsequent to this invasion and the occupation and the guerrilla war that is currently under way, we are the midwives of the next generation Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist.' "

"The assault on Falloojeh and other areas is continuing. There are rumors of awful weapons being used in Falloojeh. The city has literally been burnt and bombed to the ground. Many of the people displaced from the city are asking to be let back in, in spite of everything. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it must be for the refugees. It's like we've turned into another Palestine- occupation, bombings, refugees, death. Sometimes I'll be watching the news and the volume will be really low. The scene will be of a man, woman or child, wailing in front of the camera; crying at the fate of a body lying bloodily, stiffly on the ground- a demolished building in the background and it will take me a few moments to decide the location of this tragedy- Falloojeh? Gaza? Baghdad?

People are wondering how America and gang (i.e. Iyad Allawi, etc.) are going to implement democracy in all of this chaos when they can't seem to get the gasoline flowing in a country that virtually swims in oil. There's a rumor that this gasoline crisis has been concocted on purpose in order to keep a minimum of cars on the streets. Others claim that this whole situation is a form of collective punishment because things are really out of control in so many areas in Baghdad- especially the suburbs. The third theory is that this being done purposely so that the Iraq government can amazingly bring the electricity, gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas back in January before the elections and make themselves look like heroes.

In stunning revelations set to rock the vote from Tallahassee to Capitol Hill -- and perhaps even a bit further up Pennsylvania Avenue -- a Florida computer programmer has now made remarkable claims in a detailed sworn affidavit, signed this morning and obtained exclusively by The BRAD BLOG!

Curtis says that Feeney "was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program."

" He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected."

Though there was no problem with the first two requirements, Curtis explained to the Congressman that it would be "virtually impossible to hide such code written to change the voting results if anyone is able to review the uncompiled source code"

Nonetheless, he was asked at the meeting by Mrs. Yang to build the prototype anyway.

Curtis, "a life-long Republican" at the time, claims that it was his initial belief that Feeney's interest was in trying to stop Democrats from using "such a program to steal an election". Curtis had assumed that Feeney, "wanted to be able to detect and prevent that if it occurred."

Upon delivery of the software design and documentation on CD to Mrs. Yang, Curtis again explained to her that it would be impossible to hide routines created to manipulate the vote if anybody would be able to inspect the precompiled source code.

Mrs. Yang then told him, "You don’t understand, in order to get the contract we have to hide the manipulation in the source code. This program is needed to control the vote in South Florida."[emphasis in affidavit]

Mrs. Yang then took the CD containing the software from Curtis, reportedly for later delivery to Feeney.

In other meetings with Feeny prior to the 2000 elections, it became clear to Curtis that Feeney had plans to suppress the vote in strong Democratic precincts. In the affidavit, Curtis claims that in those meetings Feeney had "bragged that he had already implemented 'exclusion lists' to reduce the 'black vote'." Feeney also mentioned that "proper placement of police patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much as 25%."

First, Kill the Witnesses

"Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses."

The very first act of the U.S. military in storming Fallujeh was to seize the general hospital located across a bridge from the city. Next came the bombing of the clinic inside Fallujeh town. Twenty medical personnel, including almost every doctor inside Fallujeh were killed. Why?

Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your press counsellor sent a letter to the Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies." Of particular concern was the word "eliminating".

The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you requested.

Saturday, December 04, 2004

In Fallujah, our soldiers first took over the general hospital on the outskirts of the town,, arresting doctors in the middle of a serious operation, pulling them away and leaving the patient to die on the operating table. Then they bombed the small clinic inside the city, killing twenty doctors.

Reportedly, the military attacked the hospital and clinic first because in the last Fallujah attack in April, medical personnel had given journalists the numbers of the civilians killed and wounded. Once the medical personnel were effectively silenced, the military was free to announce that "No civilians were killed in Fallujah", which is what they did.

In Baghdad, U.S. soldiers invaded a mosque during Friday prayers, killing and wounding those at prayer. From the Blog of independent journalist, Dahr Jamail, in Iraq. Would that his daily journals on events in Iraq could be reprinted in all local newspapers in America. Americans need the truth about how George Bush is bringing democracy to Iraq:

Just like in Fallujah, soldiers denied Iraqi Red Crescent ambulances and medical teams access to the mosque. As doctors negotiated with U.S. soldiers outside, more gunfire was heard from inside the mosque.

About 30 men were led out with hoods over their heads and their hands tied behind them. Soldiers loaded them into a military vehicle and took them away around 3.15 pm.

A doctor with the Iraqi Red Crescent confirmed four dead and nine wounded worshippers. Pieces of brain were splattered on one of the walls inside the mosque while large blood stains covered carpets in several places.

Later Abu Talat comes to my hotel to see me. He is distraught, crying while he recounts the story. After listening to the tape he recorded inside the mosque during the atrocity, he says…

“I am in a very sad position. I do not see any freedom or any democracy. If this could lead into a freedom, it is a freedom with blood. It is a freedom of emotions of sadness. It is a freedom of killing. You cannot gain democracy through blood or killing. You do not find the freedom that way. People are going to pray to God and they were killed and wounded. There were 1,500 people praying to God and they went on a holiday were people go every Friday for prayers. And they were shot and killed. There were so many women and kids lying on the ground. This is not democracy, neither freedom.”

After several weeks of relative calm in Adhamiya, the detention of the Imam of Abu Hanifa and killing of worshippers inside their mosque is sure to ignite the fires of revenge in this area, which is already known as the Fallujah of Baghdad.

Tell them six-term Vermont Governor Doctor Howard Dean is who we need to resusitate our Party, grow our membership, and put Democrats in office at every level of the political spectrum.

Dean's "Democracy for America" organization (www.democracyforamerica.com) has been fundraising for local Democratic candidates all over the country. Many of them won. We need the National Democratic Party to be actively assisting local and state Democratic candidates in the same way. Dean will do that.

This week, Dean's "Democracy for America" made an internet appeal for donations to enable the Washington State Democratic Party to fund a recount in the governor's race there. Dean's DFA raised $250,000 in ONE DAY, which assures that the recount can take place.

Republican Rossi is only forty two votes in front of Democrat Christine Gregoire in the Washington race, and a few thousand "spoiled" ballots and provisional ballots remain un-counted. See www.mydd for more on this.

Time for the Democratic Party to Take Cooperative Action on Healthcare.

Health Care Costs Overwhelm the Uninsured.

There are forty-five million Americans without health insurance. The majority avoid going to doctors because they don't have insurance and can't afford the cost for visits. The result is that minor medical problems may turn into major medical emergenicies, forcing emergency room visits and enormous bills. Those who can't pay the emergency room bills may be forced to file bankruptcy.

At least half of my bankruptcy clients seek my help because they have thousands of dollars in medical bills which they cannot pay. Their delinquent credit card bills frequently arose because they were ill, had no income, and were forced to rely on their credit cards for basic survival expenses.

What does this have to do with the Democratic Party?

The Party Used to Provide Direct Help to Its Members.

Historically, the Democratic Party, organized into precincts or wards, was the chief social worker in over-crowded, immigrant-packed slums. When someone needed a job, they went to the Democratic "ward boss", who knew who to call and where to send them. If the family's wage earner was hospitalized and the rent was due, the ward boss would call the landlord and work out an extension of time to pay. At Christmas, the Party gave out turkeys and canned goods to its members. Indeed, the Democratic Party ran the first food banks and social work centers in the U.S. In return, party members showed up and voted Democratic on election day.

The Democratic Party held a central and crucial role in the life of the community. Its party leaders knew its members and knew intimately what the needs and aspirations of the community were. Those needs and aspirations became the party's platform and the legislation that they pushed at the county, state and national level.

The Democatic Party has lost its integral function in the community and we have to get it back if we are to start winning elections again.

Access to good health care has been on the party platform for years, and those of most of the Democratic Party presidential hopefuls in 2004. Congressman Dennis Kucinich called for universal, government organized health care, former Governor Howard Dean called for universal access to health insurance, such as he created in Vermont, Senator Kerry promised access to the same benefits of health insurance provided to members of the Congress.

Democrats, being in the minority in the House and Senate, are not in a position to implement any of their health care plans legislatively.

Build the Democratic Party By Providing Cooperative

Health Care to the Community.

What the Democratic Party can do is make group health insurance available to its party members. We are a large group, and would be very much larger if the forty five million uninsured Americans could gain basic health insurance through membership. The fees for our group health care might be set on a sliding scale based on income, with fundraising to cover
the costs for those completely unable to pay.

Ultimately, we might have a pool of "Democratic Doctors" who would agree to provide service at a reasonable rate in return for a guaranteed yearly fee. This would free doctors from having to see 100 patients a day to make their office expenses because the large insurance companies are massively under-paying doctors for their services. Expensive equipment purchase could be pooled for a given geographic area.

The farmers in the mid-west have used "cooperatives" for years, sharing the costs of purchasing feed at bulk prices, creating cooperative food markets for bulk purchasing and giving all the profits back to its members. We could establish medical service cooperatives for those ancillary services needed in the medical profession: cooperative laboratories for blood tests, cooperative radiology services for x-ray and ultra sound. The profits, instead of going to the insurance companies, would be used to improve services, even return as "dividends" to the members.

The Democratic Party Can Establish a Cooperative Model for the Provision of Health Careand Thereby Grow the Democratic Party

Once our cooperative health care service is in operation, it can be used as a model for national implementation when the Democratic Party is back in power in the White House and the Congress. And, with the possible addition of forty-five million new Democratic Party members, then we will be in power for a good long time.

When Johnny Comes Marching Home...

The Bush Administration hides it dead and wounded. No pictures are allowed of their caskets arriving at Dover from Iraq, no journalists are allowed to interview wounded soldiers at military hospitals without express written permission of the commander. In order to ask for permission, journalists must know the name of the soldier they want to interview. The names of the wounded are, of course, hidden from journalists as confidential "to protect the privacy of the soldiers."

Figures for the number of injured soldiers returning from Iraq go from 9000 to 30,000. The military's released figure is 9,000 -- they only count those wounded in battle, not the otherwise injured or ill. Figures from hospital personnel in Germany for treating all those coming from Iraq amount to 30,000. Neither of these figures include the massive number of returning soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder, who may or may not ever receive diagnosis and treatment. This is the illness that can potentially kill or injure entire families, such as the Georgia soldiers who killed their wives and then themselves. The soldiers' injured families are not counted at all in the statistics, but they are there.

Basic training is intended to turn otherwise peaceful people into killers. Most frequently it works, and thus we see on the evening news, tapes of soldiers killing the wounded and helpless. The military has no program for turning the killers back into peaceful citizens at the end of their hitch. The killers are returned to their home communities and left to fend for themselves. Many seek solace in suicide, some murder. Some receive the medical treatment and other assistance they need, some don't. But this has been true throughout American military history:

In 1917, Congress authorized disability compensation, insurance and vocational rehabilitation to help support the 200,000 wounded and 5 million returning soldiers from World War I.

On the other hand, in 1924, these same World War I veterans were promised a bonus payment of $1,000. In July of 1932, during the Great Depression, between 12,000 and 15,000 veterans and their families marched in Washington, D.C., to demand immediate payment of their bonus. They camped in shantytowns along the Anacostia River until their numbers grew to 25,000. At one point, 20,000 veterans walked slowly up and down Pennsylvania Avenue for three straight days protesting the government decision not to pay their bonus. By late July, riots began after police shot two of the marchers. Gen. Douglas MacArthur then led a machine-gun squadron, troops with fixed bayonets and a number of tanks to destroy the shantytowns and disperse the marchers with tear gas, injuring hundreds of veterans in the process.

In 1944, the GI Bill of Rights was enacted. Veterans were supported by providing money for education, low-interest mortgage loans and $20 a week while looking for employment.

While some of these benefits are still available today, nearly 300,000 current veterans can be found homeless each night, and more than 500,000 veterans will experience homelessness sometime during the year.

Korean and Vietnam veterans received little of the support and recognition that previous veterans received. Thirty years after being exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam, and suffering numerous medical problems, a neighbor of mine finally began to receive compensation from our government's admission that Agent Orange is toxic.

Because of situations like this, nearly three times the number of Vietnam veterans died after coming home than died during the war.

Today, there are reports of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, being secretly transferred from Andrews Air Force base, under the cover of darkness, to military transport planes and dispersed out to military hospitals across the country. Why? So that we do not see them.

Coffins of dead U.S. soldiers cannot be photographed returning home. Why? So that we do not see them.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Bush wants everyone to "own" their own brokerage account, which is an excellent way for everyone to go broke. If even multi-millionaires like Senator Frist, with access to the best investment brokers around, can't manage to make a profit, just how well will the rest of us do at "growing" our own retirement funds. Privatizing Social Security should be re-named the "Leave No Stockbroker Behind" bill. It's just another Bush scheme for giving money to the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class.

: "A campaign fund controlled by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has lost almost $460,000 in stock market investments since 2000 and now does not have enough to cover a sizable bank loan, according to federal election records and the manager of the Frist account.

The heaviest losses, totaling more than $500,000, occurred in a stock index fund in 2001 and 2002, years when the securities markets suffered a major downturn. But the Frist campaign account lost an additional $32,050 in July and August, a setback that was only partially offset by a gain of $11,472 in September, according to Linus Castignani, treasurer of 'Frist 2000,' which was created to finance the senator's successful campaign for a second six-year term in 2000."